The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has today released new guidelines to help healthcare professionals better diagnose the various types of headaches.

Martin Underwood, a GP and professor of primary care research at Warwick Medical School who chaired the guideline's development, said:

Patients with frequent tension-type headaches or migraines can get themselves into a vicious cycle, where their headaches are getting increasingly worse, so they take more medication which makes their pain even worse as they take more medication...

Explaining to patients that they should abruptly stop their medication, knowing that their headache will get much worse for several weeks before it will improve, is not an easy consultation.